


Anyone Would Drown

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Shell Cottage (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 01:23:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There is a kind of darkness that no nightmare can dredge from the recesses of the unwounded mind.  A twisted, bleeding filth that oozes out of madness and stains the righteous.  Hermione Granger feels as though she has become one of the soiled.





	Anyone Would Drown

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 HP Summersmut Challenge on LJ.
> 
> Title from "Liar, Liar" by A Fine Frenzy.

There is a kind of darkness that no nightmare can dredge from the recesses of the unwounded mind. A twisted, bleeding filth that oozes out of madness and stains the righteous. Only the insane can create it, but that’s the problem with insanity. It doesn’t stay contained. It leeches and spreads. It invades. It corrodes the sane until they go bad. If going mad could be manifested physically, perhaps eyeballs would rot and tumble out of skulls, leaving twin hollow pits where bright irises once sparkled with vitality.  
  
Hermione Granger feels as though she has become one of the soiled.  
  
Perhaps it was naïve of her to think that she would survive this war with all her intellect intact. Perhaps she never should have dared to hope that she would emerge as pure as when she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Harry and Ron and declared that she would never leave the so-called Chosen One to fight alone. War breeds the twisting darkness. She imagines starving white rabbits fucking in what she hopes is oil and not blood, and this is proof enough for her that she has been changed. She never used to think like that before. She thinks in words, not images.  
  
But it seems the ministrations of Bellatrix Lestrange have changed the way she thinks. She still hears words coursing through her mind, but they are accompanied by pictures pulled out of the mind of Picasso if he’d painted with razorblades.  
  
When she hears that Dobby is dead, for example, she thinks, “Oh, how terrible, Harry must feel awful, poor Dobby, he was the one who inspired me to found SPEW and now he’s gone, that’s so sad.” But she sees his tiny body rotting beneath the ground. She sees the worms making a feast of his flesh. She sees the clothes he once treasured turning to dust. And she sees him fifty years from now, waking up with no eyes because they were the first course for the dinner of decay. She sees him struggling against the grave Harry dug for him, crying maggots instead of tears and clawing at the dirt with metacarpals now that his skin is gone. He is asking over and over again why Harry Potter let him die, why Harry Potter left him alone, why Harry Potter let Bellatrix lay a hand on poor little Dobby.  
  
If Hermione put any stock in psychology, she’d assume that she was indulging in a bit of transference. But she’s always thought it was a soft science. The human mind is far too complex to be filed into categories as so many doctors would have her believe. Oh, she understands the impulse. It would be so convenient to simply label Harry with a sticker that says ‘abandonment issues’ and Ron with one reading ‘inferiority complex’ and write them off. But there are too many facets, too many variables, and though she’ll admit she sympathizes with Dobby, she certainly doesn’t identify with him.  
  
After all, Dobby died, and she lived. When you look at it that way, they have nothing in common. Nothing at all.  
  
“What are you thinking about?”  
  
Hermione turns, blinking, and remembers that she is not alone. Fleur and Bill have set her up with Luna, who is seated on the bed closest to the door, her legs tucked underneath her like a child awaiting a grandfather’s impossible life story. In a removed sort of way, she finds it a bit hilarious that the newest Mr. and Mrs. Weasley of all people have split them up by gender. They seem more like the type to wink and look the other way while the traumatized teenagers work through their urges and hormones. She wonders if Molly Weasley has some sort of hold over Bill from afar, and then she realizes it’s ridiculous to wonder.  
  
(She sees Molly shoving one of her horrible sweaters down Bill’s mouth, and when it gets stuck, she uses a Sectumsempra to cut his mouth and make it wider, but she misses, and his ear falls off.)  
  
“Hermione?”  
  
She blinks again and forces herself to look at Luna. It turns out to be more difficult than she anticipated. Luna Lovegood has always been a slight girl with a certain fragility, but now it seems as if you could break her hand just by holding it. Not that this is any surprise of course. The Malfoys don’t seem like particularly hospitable hosts if you happen to disagree with their politics. Her grey eyes seem to have faded so that the color can almost be lost among the white, and their protuberant quality has been exaggerated by her sunken cheeks and sun-starved skin.  
  
(She sees Luna’s skin falling off, revealing a skeleton that glows with moonlight and Bellatrix beats sticks against Luna’s ribcage, making music horrifying in its beauty.)  
  
“I’m fine,” Hermione whispers, her voice still raw from screaming.  
  
“That isn’t what I asked.”  
  
“Oh. Well, what did you ask?”  
  
“I asked what you were thinking about,” Luna repeats in her voice that sounds as if it’s been pulled from a dream, “but I think maybe you’re not sure.”  
  
It has been ages since Hermione actually spoke with Luna, and now that she thinks of it, she remembers that she avoids speaking with the Ravenclaw as much as possible. Certainly, she’s gained a bit of respect for the girl’s insight and intuition, but her willingness to believe anything simply because it is said still makes her want to rip her hair out. This is only slightly less annoying than Luna’s brutal honesty.  
  
(She sees herself sewing Luna’s mouth shut with thick, black thread, and throughout the whole process, Luna does not blink and she does not cry. She simply stares with light grey eyes that fade with every stitch until Hermione is staring into two tiny seas of white.)  
  
“I think the wrackspurts have gotten you.”  
  
“Oh, honestly, Luna,” Hermione sighs.  
  
“Does your brain feel a bit fuzzy? Like you’re not thinking the way you ought to? Or perhaps like you can’t quite think at all?”  
  
It isn’t a bad description, Hermione admits, but she knows that Luna’s imaginary animals have absolutely nothing to do with why her brain feels off. She says as much.  
  
Luna tilts her head to the side, and Hermione expects her to blink. She doesn’t think Luna has shut her eyes in a while, and though Luna blinks far less than most people, surely she needs to do so soon.  
  
(She sees Luna ripping her eyelids away so that she can’t blink anymore. Nagini comes slithering up from the shadows, and Luna tosses the oval pieces of flesh down the snake’s gaping jaws. The snake laughs at this folly, but the laugh belongs to Bellatrix.)  
  
“The wrackspurts can get you quite easily when you’re with Bellatrix.”  
  
Before Hermione can stop herself, her shoulders hunch like a convulsion. She feels sick, and her mouth fills with the taste of blood shed hours before and bile threatening to rise here and now, this very minute. She covers her mouth to push it back.  
  
(She sees Bellatrix reaching down her throat and pulling out her still beating heart. Blood pours out of her mouth, creating a private red sea on a marble floor. Bellatrix rolls in it, drinking it down, and laughing, laughing, always laughing.)  
  
An arm winds around her shoulders, pulling her close. She doesn’t know why, but she expects it to be Ron, tall and lanky, but reassuringly solid and warm. She nearly jumps away from a body so thin that it may as well be made of frozen glass.  
  
“Shh, it’s all right,” Luna soothes, her dream-voice lilting and soft. Her palm is a light touch on her shoulder, but it never strays. She doesn’t rub vigorously as Ron or Harry would do. She is steady and unmoving, and though Hermione is unused to the action, she finds that she enjoys the difference.  
  
“I’m sorry that she hurt you,” Luna whispers, resting her head into the crook of Hermione’s neck. “She hurt me to, you know.”  
  
Hermione had no doubt. You can’t dangle a mouse in front of a cat and not expect it to swipe.  
  
“Badly?” Hermione asks. She isn’t sure she really wants to know, but it has always been her curse that she always  _has_  to know.  
  
“At first, yes,” Luna says with an ease that makes Hermione doubt this statement, although she doubts Luna really understands the concept of lying outright. “She saw me as her own personal Christmas present, since they took me on December 20th.”  
  
(She sees Bellatrix standing over Luna curled up on the floor of the cellar, throwing up holly berries and mistletoe.)  
  
“She’d sing ‘crucio’ over and over again to the tune of Christmas carols. She preferred religious to secular,” Luna adds. “I suppose she found it ironic.”  
  
Hermione suddenly wishes Ron was there. He’d make a bad joke to defuse the situation, and though she’d swat at him, it would make her feel better.  
  
(She sees Bellatrix sitting on Ron’s corpse as one would a throne. He still has a stupid grin on his face, a grin she pretends to hate but secretly loves. Meanwhile, Bellatrix smiles like a grotesque and Hermione knows without asking that Ron has died for one of those awful jokes.)  
  
Hermione shudders and lets out a strange sound, like a kitten crying. Luna does not tighten her grip, but she continues making sounds that border on music. She doesn’t say anything more about what happened to her at Bellatrix’s hand. Only someone who went through it could understand when not to say too much. Hermione is more grateful than she can ever say for this.  
  
But again, it is Hermione’s curse that she always has to know.  
  
“How did you stand it?” she asks. “How did you stay sane?”  
  
She feels Luna shrug against her. “I don’t know. I think maybe she got bored with me. I never screamed loud enough for her, and I never cried.”  
  
Anyone who didn’t know Luna but who had been on the receiving end of Bellatrix’s tortures would have found this preposterous. But Hermione does know Luna and she accepts this as truth. Hermione has never seen Luna cry. She suspects that she saves her tears for the most important of occasions.  
  
(She sees Bellatrix bottling baby’s tears and mixing it into her blood-red wine which may not be wine.)  
  
“I keep seeing things,” Hermione confessed, driven to honesty by exhaustion or understanding or the taint of madness. “I don’t think in pictures, but I’m seeing things now. Horrible… awful things.” She swallows so hard it feels as if there’s steel in her throat. “I’m scared to go to sleep. If I’m seeing these things when I’m awake…”  
  
Luna nods and brushes Hermione’s damp hair away from her forehead. “The nightmares are terrible,” she says, never pulling any punches. “Mr. Ollivander was very kind on the worst nights. He let me curl up next to him. I don’t know why, but it helped.”  
  
And suddenly, Hermione realizes that she doesn’t want to sleep alone.  
  
She doesn’t ask and Luna doesn’t offer. They simply sit in quiet companionship for a few minutes more before simultaneously laying back. Luna pulls the covers over them and Hermione curls into Luna’s small body. Frightfully small arms encircle her, but Hermione forces herself not to be disturbed. She buries her face into the pillow and forces herself to sleep.  
  
(She dreams she is sleeping with Death, but when she wakes up, it’s Luna. After awhile, it becomes difficult to tell the difference. Neither Death nor Luna let her go once during the night, but only one is a comfort.)

 

* * *

 

Things continue in this matter for the days that follow. Luna can tell when the images threaten to overwhelm Hermione during the day, and she stays nearby. She holds her hand beneath the table and hums in her ear while they research. And every night, she neglects her bed and slips into Hermione’s, holding her between arms which steadily grow healthier.  
  
It doesn’t take long for Fleur to realize that a bed is being neglected. And Fleur being French and a Veela, she assumes things. To Hermione’s surprise, she says nothing and does not embarrass her with accusations. The only indication that Fleur knows anything is that her eyes tend to fall on Hermione and Luna when there’s nothing else to look at, her eyebrows raised and furrowed in surprise and contemplation.  
  
Predictably, Harry and Ron notice nothing, but then she doesn’t want them to, so that’s fine with her. She doesn’t think Dean or Bill know her well enough to see anything out of the ordinary, but if they suspect anything off about her behavior, they are tactful enough not to reveal it. And Griphook and Ollivander of course are irrelevant in such considerations.  
  
And all the while, Hermione continues to walk through life in a waking dream of sideshow horrors. When Harry butters his toast, she sees Bellatrix roasting him over a spit and flaying all of his skin to the bone, except for the patch on his forehead that contains his scar. When Ron hovers over her in the overly protective manner he’s developed since the Manor, she sees him hanging from the Malfoy’s ceiling with meat hooks through his shoulders. When Dean doodles in the margins of notebook paper or on napkins or any other vaguely paper-like surface, she sees Bellatrix carving ‘mudblood’ into the broad expanse of his mahogany back with a medieval chisel. Every innocuous action is immediately linked up with something far more bloody in Hermione’s mind, and so each and every one of them are victimized again and again in a variety of tortures that become increasingly familiar.  
  
Hermione knows that sanity was a fragile construct. With every day, with every hour, with every minute, she finds herself wondering if Bellatrix shattered hers with a spell that wrought pain worse than crucifixion. And every day, every hour, and every minute, Luna remains within arm’s reach for when the visions clouds her normal sight, and with a touch, Luna keeps her tethered to reality.  
  
It’s worst at night, but that’s to be expected. There are no distractions from the nightmares that plague her in the light of day. She wakes with a scream between her lips, ready to burst, but Luna always wakes before her. And the fragile blond girl presses her fingers to her lips and it holds the shrieks and whimpers back.  
  
Sometimes, when Hermione is not quite awake enough to be sure, she thinks Luna’s lips also kept her silent. At first, this seems preposterous. But it happens too many times for Hermione to ignore, and she is too intelligent to fool herself into believing anything but the truth. She’s tried it time and again – when she discovered Lupin was a werewolf and when it occurred to her that perhaps scarring Marianna Edgecombe’s face wasn’t the best course of action. She always leads herself to the correct conclusion whether she wants to or not.  
  
Part of Hermione thinks she ought to be offended, but she simply isn’t. Intellectually she could make an argument about being taken advantage of – ridiculous as the phrase sounded – but she knows that this is not the case. Luna is not so malicious; it will not have even occurred to her to be cruel. Luna is doing this to make Hermione feel better.  
  
Hermione knows herself well enough to know that it’s working.  
  
This invites the normal questions she supposes most teenagers ponder at one time or another. Questions of sexual identity and preference and all that. Having four female roommates in a boarding school ought to have left her considering it more often than not, but this simply isn’t the case. Hermione supposes it had something to do with her constant endeavor to keep Harry from getting himself killed. And besides, Ron’s always been there.  
  
She considers it now because she has time at Shell Cottage she never had at Hogwarts. Even as they prepare to take the next Horcrux, Bill and Fleur’s home has a relaxed environment that invites the soul-searching contemplation Hermione never indulged in. She’s always had grades to worry about on top of Harry’s safety, school on top of saving the world. Now all she has to do is save the world, and despite the enormity of that task, Hermione can allow herself a few moments in between plotting and visions to think, “Well, why not?”

 

* * *

 

Finally, it’s the last night that Hermione would spend at the Shell Cottage. The next day, she, Ron, Harry, and Griphook will travel to Gringott’s bank in what will hopefully be a successful attempt to rob Bellatrix’s vault. To add insult to Hermione’s injury, she will have to pretend to be Bellatrix in order to gain them access.  
  
It terrifies her.  
  
She can’t say no to Ron and Harry of course. She can’t even consider it. It needs to be done in order to get the Hufflepuff Cup and in turn, to win the war. Her own feelings are immaterial.  
  
Harry and Ron don’t understand what she went through and what she continues to go through. She doesn’t want them to understand. She won’t let them understand. She keeps her worries hidden from everyone but Luna Lovegood of all people, because Luna Lovegood understands. When Ron and Harry excitedly recount their master plan over dinner, everyone else is in awe of the daring. Luna leans her head against Hermione’s shoulder as if she’s too tired to hold it up, and whispers, “It’ll be okay.”  
  
(She sees Bellatrix stepping out of her skin as if it were a dress. Bellatrix handed it to her, and Hermione stepped into it. A moment later, she is Bellatrix, and the bloody, skinless monster that was once Bellatrix whispers in a voice like flesh being ripped apart. “You are me. I have made you what you are not. I have given you my disease, and no freckled boy or moon girl can save you from it. I’m mad, you’re mad, we’re all mad here.”)

 

* * *

 

“Am I going crazy?” Hermione asks quietly in the stillness of midnight. She’s in her bed again, Luna’s arms are around her again, but neither of them have made a pretense of sleeping. There will be no rest for either of them tonight.  
  
“No,” Luna insists, her lips brushing against Hermione’s cold brow. “That’s what the wrackspurts want you to think.”  
  
She wants to yell at Luna for bringing that into the conversation at a time like this, but she doesn’t. She can’t bear to push away the one thing keeping her grounded.  
  
“I feel as though I’m going crazy.”  
  
“You’re just as sane as I am,” Luna tells her, and Hermione feels as though she’s heard that before.  
  
“How can you be sure?”  
  
Luna shifts her body slightly, filling in the gaps Hermione didn’t even know were there. A little bit of tension unravels like a fraying rope.  
  
(She sees Luna strong up by the neck, hanging from a noose, but her neck has not broken. She’s suffocating, and it seems to take an age. All the while, Bellatrix dances beneath her twitching limbs, cackling and swirling in the Dark Marks made from storm heads that trail behind her.)  
  
“Mad people don’t worry that they’re insane,” Luna assures her. “They accept their logic as reality because it doesn’t occur to them not to. The fact that you question means that you’re sane.”  
  
Hermione doesn’t know if she can trust in this supposition, which is circular at best. “I keep seeing my friends dying over and over again.”  
  
“You’re not hallucinating,” Luna murmurs. “You’re seeing it in your mind. Imagining. You never mistake it for reality.”  
  
“I never used to think that way.”  
  
Luna exhales. Her breath smells like chamomile and lemon. “Maybe it will go away. Maybe it won’t. I don’t know for sure. But Bellatrix twists your mind. She changes you. I don’t know if it’s forever, but it’s for awhile.”  
  
Hermione swallows, and she asks another question she probably shouldn’t.  
  
“Did she change you?”  
  
“Yes,” Luna answers, without hesitation or guile. “She’s made me more determined to win this war. She’s made me want to help you and Ron and Harry in any way I can.” She blinks, and it’s almost like a pause. “And she’s made me afraid.”  
  
This hurts. Hermione doesn’t know Luna as well as the boys, but she knows her well enough to be certain that Luna is not afraid of much, if anything. She is calm in the face of death, a child monk with impossible eyes, and this makes her an anomaly among anomalies. That Bellatrix has made her afraid of something does not bode well for her or for anyone.  
  
“What are you afraid of?”  
  
“Her hurting anyone else.”  
  
How simple. How kind. How unlike her expectations. How very Luna.  
  
“You’re not afraid of her?” Hermione asks in a tiny voice. “Afraid she’s poisoned you?”  
  
“No,” Luna says with earth-shattering reassurance. “I’m too strong for that.” Her hand reaches up, strokes her fact, like a ghost or a feather. “So are you.”  
  
It strikes Hermione as odd that the proverbial gun to start the race comes with so soft a gesture. They’ve both been moving towards this, she knows. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Luna’s been moving towards her and Hermione has not run away. Given her current situation, it’s really the best that can be hoped for.  
  
Luna shifts again, but rather than filling gaps, she opens them, save one. Her face looms closer to Hermione’s, her wide grey eyes asking the silent question. Hoping that all of this hasn’t been one gigantic misinterpretation, Hermione closes her eyes in what must pass for permission.  
  
Luna understands because Luna always understands, and Hermione is correct because she’s always correct. Luna’s lips press against Hermione’s with familiar pressure. How funny that even in the drunken uncertainty between sleep and waking, Hermione is aware enough to memorize the contours of Luna’s mouth. But in an instant, everything is different because it isn’t just Luna pressing down, it’s Hermione pushing back. It’s lips moving and sliding and just the right pressure and  _oh-my-yes-please_  tongues.  
  
If Hermione is perfectly honest with herself, she has been rather gypped in the way of kissing. Viktor was perfectly brilliant in a technical sense – how could be not be, with his rough grace in the air and on the ground. But she had always felt awkward around Viktor, mystified by his attentions and clumsy with any of her own advances. He had been kind to her and tried to make up for her unexpected physical idiocy, but there was only so much he could when her heart wasn’t really in it.  
  
Cormac of course hadn’t so much kissed her as he had assaulted her. Perhaps it was a bit of a flippant descriptor. But when one considered that he had grabbed her, held on too tight, pulled her towards him, and then shoved his tongue down her throat as if it were a Quaffle and she a goalpost, it seemed apt. Cormac was as much an idiot at kissing as he was with everything else, and too much of an idiot to realize it.  
  
And then of course there’s Ron, who hasn’t even tried.  
  
Hermione does not exaggerate in thinking that kissing Luna wide awake and willing makes up for (almost) all of these slights. She does not know what has gone on in the Ravenclaw Tower that warrants such skill, but she finds herself wondering if Ron’s horrible insinuations about experimental Ravenclaws may have a ring or truth to them after all.  
  
Luna knows just the right way to kiss in Hermione’s opinion. She is neither forceful nor too expectant. Her lips seek with curiosity, not insistence, and her fingers brush against Hermione’s cheek in something like tenderness.  
  
However, what serves this kiss best is that both of them feel mutual respect and affection. Hermione knows she is not in love with Luna (that is for someone else), but she does love her. And Hermione would never doubt that Luna, while not in love with her, does love her. Strangely, it is enough.  
  
Luna rolls off her side, pulling herself up to her knees. Hermione raises herself onto her elbows, not wanting to break contact with this kiss for even a moment. Then Luna straddles Hermione, her knees striding Hermione’s hips. And all the while, Luna’s tongue curls inside of Hermione’s mouth, tantalizingly slow.  
  
This pace seems to set the pace for the evening. Luna strokes Hermione’s face, buries her hand in her impossibly thick hair, and continues kissing her at the same speed. She is never rushed, never hurried. Even when Hermione’s breathing becomes punctuated by tiny moans and her hips press upwards against Luna’s body, Luna never yields.  
  
And then suddenly, Luna pulls away. Hermione begins to protest, but then Luna’s lips are pressing fast against her jawline, kissing along the curve so that skin tingles in her wake. And slowly, so slowly, Luna advances downward – to the flesh beneath her ear, to the curve of her neck, to the hollow of her throat.  
  
Her lips find Hermione’s clavicle, warm and wet against the jutting bone, and Hermione’s clothes begin to fall away. The top layers slip from her torso like water off stone. Her breasts are exposed to the cool spring air, and Luna covers them with kisses too. Luna takes a nipple in her mouth, suckling, and Hermione bites her wrist to keep from moaning too loud. The touch sends a river of heat straight to the space between her legs, and she knows without touching that she has never been this wet before. She begs Luna to touch her, but Luna just grins against her skin. She licks the nipple until Hermione can’t stand it anymore, then she switches to the other breast. Luna repeats this process several times, until Hermione threatens that she may come at any moment.  
  
Then Luna shrugs but continues her descent. She leaves a trail down her ribcage and over the taut flesh of her stomach. Slowly, so slowly, but so surely, Luna moves closer to the heat.  
  
And then she’s there.  
  
In one swift, assured movement, Luna grasps Hermione’s skirt and knickers and pulls them down, over her thighs, knees, and shins until they’re discarded entirely. Hermione is naked and bare and not the least bit embarrassed. She is simply wanting, taking in gulps of air as if she were in danger of drowning.  
  
Luna dips her head and pushes Hermione’s legs apart. Hermione had been wondering if it was all leading up to this particular action, and frankly, she’s not sure how she feels about it. It simply doesn’t seem sanitary or at all proper, and she opens her mouth to tell Luna to stop. But then Luna runs her tongue against her labia in one long, sure stroke, and Hermione finds it is impossible to form a cogent sentence.  
  
It is impossible that anything should feel that good, least of all something that makes the prudish Briton in Hermione wince away from. But she cannot help but love the feeling. She cannot help but do anything save arch her back, drive her fingers into the silver-blonde tufts of Luna’s hair, and moan. Luna continues to lick her, the tip of her tongue slipping into her vagina or flicking against the bud of her clit. Hermione keeps one hand in Luna’s hair, trying to drive her closer, while she sucks her own fingers to keep from screaming. And Luna stays where she is, her head between Hermione’s legs, playing her like a harp or a violin or perhaps an instrument that actually requires a mouth.  
  
The orgasm takes Hermione almost by surprise. She feels the tension build and then begin to break, and for a moment, she’s almost disappointed that it’s come so soon. But Luna refocuses her attentions solely on her clit, licking and sucking, and then there is nothing whatsoever to be disappointed about. Hermione comes exquisitely, shaking and trembling and crying Luna’s name. She feels every muscle stretch and pull for one of the most delicious minutes of her life. And when it’s over, she feels as though she’s floating and she never wants to come down.  
  
Luna shifts forward so that her face hovers above Hermione’s, and Hermione kisses her even though she’s tasting herself on Luna’s lips. When they part, Hermione sees that Luna’s eyes have changed. No longer are they distant and not-quite-there. Luna is like a lioness on the prowl, predatory. Hermione is apparently the equivalent of a wounded, debauched gazelle.  
  
Hermione does not doubt for a moment that her expression is a mirror image of Luna’s.  
  
Hermione pushes Luna upright and then rises to her knees in turn. She contemplates attempting to move with the same sensual grace Luna has possessed this entire evening, but ultimately decides it isn’t worth it to try. She kisses Luna with unexpected roughness and then tugs at the hem of the dress Luna borrowed from Fleur. That it is still a little big on her goes a long way to show what the Malfoy’s treatment accomplished.  
  
With Luna’s help, Hermione pulls the dress up over Luna’s head, revealing an entirely naked body beneath. Hermione supposes this is not too surprising – it’s not as if she can borrow Fleur’s underwear, and Transfiguration was never Luna’s best subject even when she had her own wand. It is still arousing, despite the body beneath.  
  
Luna has put on weight since coming to Shell Cottage, but not nearly enough. Hermione can still count the ribs beneath Luna’s flesh, and her skin still has a translucent, sagging quality to it. Hermione shudders slightly when she realizes that if Luna’s thinness disturbs her now, it must have been a ruin when she first escaped.  
  
Sensing her discomfort, Luna reaches forward to cup Hermione’s cheek. She smiles softly and whispers, “It’s all right. I’m all right now. Everything will be okay.”  
  
And then she kisses her again, and Hermione finds herself willing to believe this is true.  
  
Hermione does not have the confidence Luna had with these matters, so she does not consider following Luna’s lead entirely. Hermione uses her hands where Luna used her mouth. She runs her fingers over the planes of Luna’s sharp shoulders, the curve of her hip, the swell of her breast. She pinches lightly and soothes quickly. Luna never moans, but she gasps into Hermione’s mouth and sighs quietly.  
  
Then Hermione’s fingers seek out the juncture between Luna’s thighs. The flesh is wet and warm, inviting and reassuring. Hermione immediately wants to be inside of Luna, so she enters her with two fingers, pushing and stroking, seeing out the most sensitive of areas.  
  
Luna pulls away, tipping her head back and exposing her throat. Hermione cannot resist it, so she leans forward and rakes her teeth over the pale skin. She feels Luna’s frantic pulse beat against her lips, and she begins to thrust in time.  
  
She gasps when Luna’s fingers rub against her own still sore clit, and she bites down too hard. She starts to apologize, but then she notices that Luna has finally moaned, and she smiles. Hermione leans up to bite her earlobe and whispers, “Inside me. I want you there.”  
  
Hermione never has to ask twice. She gasps as Luna enters her, her fingers seeking out the same spot. Hermione adds a third finger to her ministrations, and Luna’s eyelashes flutter.  
  
They thrust into one another, brushing against the flesh a mere two inches inside. Luna adds a third finger to mimic Hermione’s own actions. Hermione sinks her teeth into Luna’s shoulder to muffle her sounds, and Luna makes a few of her own in response. They flick thumbs over clits lightly and then rub constantly. Hermione’s hips buck at her sensitivity, and Luna thrusts her hips into Hermione’s movements, desperation climbing.  
  
Finally, they both come within moments of each other, moans caught in a kiss that bruises. They draw it out as long as they can, swiveling hips and reapplying pressure. But then they’re spent, and just like the first night, no one suggests that they go to sleep. They lay down in one movement. Luna tucks them in. Hermione curls into Luna’s still fragile body.  
  
And when Hermione falls asleep that night, she does not have a single nightmare.


End file.
